Nationalise and Socialise Procurement and Distribution of Food!

Enhance Food Subsidy to support a Modern Universal PDS!

Cut Down Arms Spending and Suspend Interest Payments!

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is presenting the Union Budget on 26th February, at a time when the working class is reeling under the burden of record food price inflation.  President Pratibha Patil, in her address to Parliament on the opening day of the budget session, blamed various external forces and the weather for food prices rising at over 20%.  This is a sign that the present rulers of India are not going to solve the food problem. 

The corporate controlled media is full of speculation about whether the Finance Minister will withdraw this or that sop to this or that class or section in society – the very sops that were extended earlier to stimulate capitalist profits.  How to manage the ups and downs of capitalist profit rates is not the concern of the toiling majority of India.  No, our foremost concern is that the economy is not fulfilling even our most basic needs – the need for adequate food in our stomachs!

The budget session of Parliament is the occasion for the working class to step up its agitation for an immediate and credible solution to the problem of ensuring adequate food at affordable prices for all.  If the Central Government cannot take the necessary steps to address this burning problem of the masses, then such a government does not deserve to survive.  It is with this fighting spirit that workers must go into action at this time.

The solution to the problem lies in bringing the purchase and sale of food under social control, thereby removing the role of private profiteers in this sphere of the economy. This means only social organizations – central, state and local governments, trade unions, peasant, women and youth organizations, should play a role in storing and distributing food.  Private capitalist corporations who are raking in maximum profits from food trade today must be taken over by the government, without compensation, in the national interest. That is, private profiteers must have no place in wholesale trade in food items within the country and in foreign trade. With trade under social control, it is possible to guarantee stable and remunerative prices for the peasant producers, and guaranteed supply at stable and affordable prices to all working class families. 

Does this mean an increase in food subsidy in the central budget?  Most certainly, yes. In the longer term, if due attention is paid to bring peasants together into cooperatives and achieve higher levels of productivity and production of food, the need for the budget to subsidise food trade can be eliminated. On an immediate basis, workers must demand that the food subsidy be enhanced.  It must be made large enough to support a modern and universal PDS, not just for wheat and rice but also for dals, cooking oil, sugar and all essential daily food articles.

Spokesmen of the bourgeoisie will of course say that the Government of India cannot afford to increase the food subsidy and expand PDS.  The working class must propose concrete ways to finance this expansion.

The Communist Ghadar Party of India, in its Program adopted in 1998, made three basic proposals for raising the resources needed to address the needs of the toiling masses. These three proposals remain valid and relevant till today:

•   Suspend debt service payments to the money lending institutions until further notice;
•   Cut back on the huge unproductive expenditure on arms and military expansion; and
•   Immediate confiscation of all unaccounted wealth and black money in the economy.

In the 2009/10 Budget presented a year ago, the allocation for food subsidy was Rs. 52,500 crore, while the allocation for arms and armament expansion was Rs. 54,800 crore and provision for interest payments was as high as Rs. 225,000 crore.  If half of all interest payments are suspended, this alone would be enough to expand the food subsidy to more than three times its current size.

Mazdoor Ekta Lehar calls on all organizations and parties of the working class to unite in struggle to demand an immediate and credible solution to the food problem. Let us not compromise with anything less than complete socialization of food procurement and distribution, which is the only lasting solution.  Let us plunge into this struggle as part and parcel of our struggle to replace capitalism by socialism, a system that is oriented to fulfill the rising needs of the toiling people.